Historical replay · ARB/USD
Arbitrum's Two Waves (August–September 2026)
Up 149% in a week, down 36% over nine days, then a new high at $0.2555. A 25-day window in which ARB punished both late buyers and early sellers.
Arbitrum is one of the largest layer-2 networks built on top of Ethereum, and its ARB token had a long, grinding 2025 and 2026: from a Binance high of $2.425 in January 2024 it had fallen to about $0.08 by late August 2026. On August 30 it printed $0.0831, the low where this replay starts.
The first wave was relentless. ARB closed August 31 up almost 30%, rose on most days of the following week, and posted a 34% gain on September 5 alone. On September 6 it reached $0.2066 — about 149% above the August 30 low — on the heaviest trading day of the whole window, $100 million.
Then came the part that tests patience. Over the next nine days ARB gave back about 36%, sliding to $0.1314 on September 15, and daily volume dried up to as little as $9 million on September 12. Anyone who bought near the top was sitting on a large loss; anyone who sold on the way down was about to miss the next leg.
The second wave started on the afternoon of September 15, with an 8.6% candle in the 15:00 UTC hour. ARB rose 25% on September 18 — including a 10% hour — and reached $0.2555 early on September 23, about 24% above the first peak and its highest level since November 2025. It closed that same day 8% lower, at $0.216.
The chart is worth replaying with the volume in mind. The second peak was higher, but the busiest day of the second wave traded $94 million, less than the first. That kind of divergence doesn't call the top on its own, but it's a textbook example of a rally continuing with fewer new participants — and of how a 36% pullback can sit in the middle of a move that ultimately went higher.